Mental models and other misconceptions in children’s understanding of the earth

There’s a creepy guy on the other end at Google!: engaging middle school students in a drawing activity to elicit their mental models of Google

“…First, as other researchers have found (e.g., Barrett and Bridson 1983;Light 1985;Panagiotaki et al 2009), our participants' drawings may have been influenced by the instructions that we provided in regard to both the drawing activity and the subsequent verbal explanations of their drawings that we requested. Additionally, as participants shared their drawings in groups, some participants' verbal explanations of their drawings may have been influenced by the explanations provided by the students who went before them.…”

“…People's mental models may be inaccurate for a variety of reasons, including a person's lack of awareness of all relevant belief structures at the same time (Norman 1983) and a researcher's vague or ambiguous instructions and questions and/or his/her misinterpretation of study participants' responses, particularly when the participants are children (Panagiotaki et al 2009). Another reason that people's mental models may be inaccurate can be linked to the demand characteristics inherent in the study situation (Norman 1983).…”

A "mental models" approach to the communication of subsurface hydrology and hazards

“…The perception of risk within a two-factor space, representing public perceptions of how risky an activity was based on its familiarity and how fatal the consequences may be (Slovic, 1987, p. 98). theory, developed by Johnston-Laird (1980) as a conceptual paradigm that encompassed new ideas about language and perception in the burgeoning field of cognitive science. The theory of mental models as interpretation of theoretical reasoning has fallen from favour in psychology (Evans, 2002;Over, 2009), but it is still used in the applied sense, particularly by researchers examining decision making associated with risk, communication and education (Goel, 2007;Larson et al, 2012;Panagiotaki et al, 2009;Skarlatidou et al, 2012).…”

Young children’s acquisition of knowledge about the Earth: A longitudinal study

“…1016/j.jecp.2010.04.002 (see Diakidoy, Vosniadou, & Hawks, 1997;Samarapungavan, Vosniadou, & Brewer, 1996;Vosniadou, 1994Vosniadou, , 2002Vosniadou & Brewer, 1992;Vosniadou, Skopeliti, & Ikospentaki, 2004) or whether their knowledge is mainly fragmented before they acquire scientific theory (see Nobes et al, 2003;Siegal, Butterworth, & Newcombe, 2004;Straatemeier, van der Maas, & Jansen, 2008). Another related question has focused on the extent to which methods used in collecting and analyzing the data influence the outcome (i.e., either models or fragments of knowledge) (see Panagiotaki, Nobes, & Banerjee, 2006;Panagiotaki, Nobes, & Potton, 2009).…”